A film as grievous as bodily harm

DON’T be fooled by the title. Green Street (18), now showing at the Odeon Kingston, is not a film about that fat actor from The Maltese Falcon and Casablanca. Instead, you can expect to be plunged into the vicious netherworld of football violence in Britain, where knuckles, bricks and bottles settle old scores between rival tribes of hooligans.

Elijah Wood, in another less than believable attempt to kick the hobbit, plays Frodo the Football Hooligan.

Actually, he plays a sweet, hobbitish Harvard student, Matt Baggins, sorry, Buckner, who is sent down from college for possession of drugs. In fact, he is taking the rap for his blueblood room-mate who, in line with much of the characterisation in this film, is thrilled to bits that Matt is leaving on his behalf.

So, off the disgraced journalism student pops to Mordor. Apologies, make that London, which is portrayed in much the same terms. Matt plans to stay with his sister, who is married to a well-off geezer, Steve Dunham (Marc Warren).

Steve talks in those studied geezerish tones that only years at drama school can provide. By contrast, Steve’s scally of a younger brother, Pete (Charlie Hunnam), displays a cock-er-ney accent that only minutes listening to Dick Van Dyke could provide. No, Dick Van Dyke’s was better. Stone the crows, even Gerard Depardieu could do better.

Hunnam’s distracting failure to master his character’s way of speaking might be forgivable in an American, but this boy is British. Which makes him sound mighty strange as the young leader of a gang of laddish, pub-loving East End street-fighters, supporters of West Ham United, the Green Street Elite. They might be vicious, predatory thugs with no redeeming features, but at least they love their old violence.

Their world becomes Matt’s world as Pete improbably takes the “septic tank” (allegedly rhyming slang for yank) under his worthless wing.

This is where the film is allowed to get as grievous as bodily harm, glamorising the entirely detestable activities of football thugs.

We see fists and blood flying in slow motion, the camera jumping about as if the cameraman was on a trampoline, and these inadequates, swathed in their Burberry and Lacoste, their Fred Perry and their Tommy Hilfiger, dignified by the kind of slow motion walking shots we saw in Reservoir Dogs.

The horrendous racism of so many football thugs is glossed over with scarcely a mention.

What is explored, without depth, is the hooligans’ lust for reputation and their code of honour, which is essentially the honour of the cave. Matt is seduced by both soon after he throws his first punch.

It is a shame that the obvious platonic attraction between Matt and Pete is never explored in tandem, especially when it is lifted into something of an unrequited love triangle by the intense jealousy of Pete’s right-hand man, Bover (Leo Gregory). A more layered film might have resulted.

Enter a hated rival, Tommy Hatcher from Millwall. Expertly played by Geoff Bell, Hatcher is the only genuinely disturbing character in the film, a hard-bitten, middle-aged brute with face and fists of granite and a mind powered by poisonous cunning.

The Green Street Elite is held responsible for the death of Hatcher’s son years before and he burns for revenge. The rest of the film shows how he gets it, exploiting Bover’s jealousy.

Written by hooligan expert Dougie Brimson, the film is obviously well-informed and the dialogue, when it isn’t being mangled by the likes of Hunnam, has an authentic flavour.

However, Lexi Alexander’s direction fails to ignite the production. When a documentary approach is attempted, it is killed either by flashy camera tricks or by coming across with all the awkwardness of a Crimewatch reconstruction. Green Street is further marred by a curious sense of distance, as if we are supposed to be innocent, peace-loving Americans looking through the bars of a blood-spattered British zoo.